


Dandelions on the Tongue

by TheVelvetCoatedWonder



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Flower Imagery, Hanahaki AU, Hanahaki Disease, Langst, Lovesickness, M/M, Open Ending, Unrequited Love, hanahaki disease au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-22 22:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11389473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVelvetCoatedWonder/pseuds/TheVelvetCoatedWonder
Summary: Lance never meant to fall in love. He’d known of Keith, yes, followed him from afar at the Garrison, a moon inevitably pulled into the orbit of a far greater planet, eyes tracking him with the longing of a person who knows they will have to work twice as hard to get half as far.He began losing weight, it sloughing off him in favor of blooming green. The shadows under his eyes were violets, the pink chafe of his mouth begonias, and he smelled like summer in a hothouse.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So my background in creative writing is actually poetry based, and my sister has me writing a rom-com crack fic-  
> pretty far from my comfort zone. While it's super fun and I love it, it kind of drains me. Writing plot is much harder for me than writing metaphor. So after struggling a lot to write my main fic, I was scrolling through insta for inspiration and found the quote "you made flowers grow in my lungs, and while they are beautiful I can't breathe," and I immediately was like Lance would say that. And then I wrote this- it's nice to get back to something artsy once in a while.

Lance never meant to fall in love. He’d known of Keith, yes, followed him from afar at the Garrison, a moon inevitably pulled into the orbit of a far greater planet, eyes tracking him with the longing of a person who knows they will have to work twice as hard to get half as far.

When they’d come together, thrown into something greater than themselves through no fault of their own, Lance had disallowed himself the luxury of longing. He scraped out his place on the team with laughs loud enough to cover up the hitch of breath at the end. He worked himself to exhaustion so that he had no room for graceful hands and dark eyes and inky black baby hairs at the nape of a neck.

He thought it would work. But focusing on not focusing on him only made it so that every thought was tinged with his absence. When the scent of flowers filled Blue’s cockpit, Lance told himself that he was thinking of Earth. 

But then, a tickle in Lance’s throat, a flower in his lap, brought there as if on the first summer breeze. 

He didn’t allow himself to think it. He knew what it meant, but if he didn’t say the words out loud, if he didn’t let the thought articulate within his mind, he didn’t have to deal with it. It wasn’t happening.

Every conversation Lance had with him ended in the smell of dandelion coating the back of his mouth, a tickle in his throat, flower petals on his tongue. 

In their next battle, Red was almost hit. Lance saw the moment as if from underwater, slow and warped. When the moment ended Lance was coughing, hacking, his lap and the pilot’s chair covered in flowers. It looked like spring. It looked like death.

Blue was worried. She pushed at Lance’s mind with the insistence that he tell. He accepted her worry, selfish enough that he wanted someone’s care, but also selfish enough to indulge in his cowardice, to beg her to not tell Black. She agreed, but Lance knew it was because she didn’t realize this would only get worse. That there was no coming back from this blooming beauty inside him, not until he’d bloomed entirely from the inside out, bloom becoming rot, and leaving him a garden barren.

Lance began waking, in the middle of the night, dreams slipping through his fingers like flower petals, memories of fleeting touches, skin against skin, a hot, wet mouth gasping against his. He awoke because he couldn’t breathe, would roll over gasping like a man drowned, and would cough up blossom after blossom. His bed looked like a bower, and Lance realized he could sleep there no longer.

He took to going into his room, waiting for tense, careful hours, muffling his coughs and ignoring the cloying stench of rose, until the castle went quiet but for the sounds of its life support. Lance would sneak away to the hangar, leaving the scent of spring in his wake, curling up in Blue’s cockpit to sleep the night away. Her floor was covered in blossoms, some gone slick with decay, smears of ugly stench that gave the smell of flowers an undertone of cloying rot. Lance curled up among them, dead and dying, and tried to convince himself that he wanted to live. That he’d cut out his heart, deadhead it, before he ever let love carry him into an early grave.

The others never noticed. Hunk told him he looked more radiant every day. Pidge wanted to know where he kept finding perfume. Allura praised his change in attitude to a more mature self. Lance didn’t tell her he was afraid to talk lest flowers fell out.

Shiro seemed to know, better than the rest. He sought Lance out, away from the others, and asked if something was the matter. Lance told him he was scared, that he missed home, and that he hoped this all finished soon. Shiro laid a hand on his shoulder, and told him they’d overcome the obstacles in their way soon enough. Lance wondered how to tell him that he himself was the obstacle, one he had no way to overcome.

He began losing weight, it sloughing off him in favor of blooming green. The shadows under his eyes were violets, the pink chafe of his mouth begonias, and he smelled like summer in a hothouse.

He noticed. Keith finally, finally noticed. The cause and cure to Lance’s demise noticed, and said, “Is there something wrong with you? We can’t form Voltron if you’re irresponsible enough to let yourself get sick.”

And that was it. Months of Lance’s pining, flower after flower had fallen from Lance’s lips, and none of them had cut him like the callousness of those words. Lance felt uprooted, a tree fallen, a flower sunk under the weight of its petals. Under the weight of his love. He knew he’d made the right choice. In an instant, Lance’s resolve was vindicated- he had not told Keith, he never would tell Keith. He would take this secret to his grave. His flower-covered, spring-scented bower of death. His feelings were entirely his own; it was clear they’d never had a twin echo inside the other boy’s head. If Lance was to die, he’d take his ignominy with him, his humiliation private, his feelings entirely his own. 

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite go that way. There was a battle, and he tried to hold it together, to keep up the ruse for just one more fight. But the tickle in Lance’s throat was near continuous these days, and suddenly the overripe scent of lily was so heavy that Lance was retching, retching and coughing and the comms went silent, the shouting of the other paladins muted in sudden shock. Shiro called a retreat and they returned to the castle, Lance’s gasps an unasked-for companion but constant nonetheless. 

Blue’s hatch opened, in spite of Lance’s protests. He knew what it looked like, there were flower petals calf deep on the floor, spilling past the door, the weight of the topmost layers crushing the bottom into sludge that stunk of earth and rot. Lance looked much the same, too weak to stand, his chest coated in flowers, his lap filled, a single petal sticking to his lips.

They all knew what it meant. Pidge cried. She clung to him and cried like a baby. Hunk tried to ask who it was, Shiro told him to stop. But Lance had thought this far ahead at least. He would not let them feel guilty for his demise. They would blame themselves no matter what he did, even though no one could help their feelings, but this would make their guilt irrational. Able to be explained away. Lance wished his own feelings could be much the same.

“There’s a girl,” he croaked, unable to stop the tears, but feeling safe in the knowledge that they’d be misunderstood, “We had a good thing going before I- left. But three months in… I guess she must have started grieving.”

There was an ugly heavy silence, the word hanging in the in the air like a promise. A threat.

“I- can’t just stop loving- I’m sorry but-” his voice cracked, and Shiro, voice thick, replied, “You never have to apologize for love, Lance.”

Allura and Coran had joined them now, and while they had no idea what Lance’s sickness was, they knew it was sickness nonetheless. 

“Is there no way to fix it?” Allura asked, face white, voice shaking.

Hunk shook his head, his shoulders bearing the weight of a thousand flowers, of every blossom in Lance’s cockpit. “Lance is- if it had been a sickness medicine could cure? Maybe. But this?” He shuddered with sadness. “There’s nothing we can do for him now.”

Lance grinned at Hunk, opening his mouth only to cough out a spider lily. The final flower any lovesick person bloomed. He brushed it away, the eyes of every person there riveted to it like the death warrant it was.

Lance tried again.

“Hunk,” he rasped, “There’s absolutely something you can do. Leave me under the sky.” His face crumpled, shoulders shaking, “I don’t want to die in space. I want to die on- if not Earth, at least someplace like Earth.”

His words rang heavy, an executioner lifting his own axe, and Coran turned away, his voice giving away nothing and yet everything as he said, “I’ll make for the nearest planet.”

Lance had held out hope. When they rushed in and saw the flowers, if there was any way that Keith would return his affections, surely the knowledge that Lance was dying would have brought them to the forefront. But the moment the spider lily passed his lips, he knew he was a flower already fallen from the stem. Spider lilies were for the doomed. For the dead.

Keith had said nothing, this whole time, but as silence stretched, Pidge’s muffled sobs the only thing breaking the hush, Keith burst, “Is this really it? You’re- you’re going to die, for a girl back home, who gave up on you after only three months?”

Lance smiled, a tiny broken thing like a crushed petal, and was glad he hadn’t told the truth. If Keith was angry with him for this more noble version of the truth, imagine what honesty would have wrought.

Shiro turned on Keith, “Take that back,” he said, voice angry, raw with hurt. “You know as well of the rest of us you cannot control the heart. Do not dishonor Lance’s love like that.”

Keith looked stricken. Hunk, Pidge and Lance were tense, but Keith gave a shudder, and the dam broke. The rain came. Keith cried like he fought, fast, beautiful, tiny hiccuping sobs and eyes tinged pink. Shiro came forward to hug him, and Lance wished he could have held his hand.

They carried Lance to the bridge, and Shiro told the Alteans that if Lance was coughing spider lilies they had only a few hours left. Allura murmured the closest planet was just shy of that. They were making good time. No one knew what to say. Lance was beautiful, covered in the blossoms he no longer had to hold back, fingers absently weaving flower crowns for his friends. Pidge wore hers with a sort of melancholy dignity. Hunk demanded a necklace to match.

They touched down, carried Lance out. The sky was tinged with mauve and the knoll they’d landed on had too many pink mushrooms to really look like Earth, but there was wind in Lance’s hair and sunshine on his face. He’d be happy here. 

They settled him, Shiro trying to help him sit up until Lance said he’d rather lay down. Pidge said she was going to get his flowers. Anyone who died of lovesickness was buried in their flowers, surrounded by the feelings that overwhelmed them, to be enveloped one last time. It was a beautiful procession, all of them still in their armor, carrying armful after armful of blossoms, petals scattering in the wind, blanketing Lance like spring and life incarnate. 

The sun departed, and so did Lance. Pidge was curled up into his side, Hunk and Shiro each holding a hand, Keith, Coran and Allura sitting near and watching as the Garrison trio whispered about the good times they’d had, and what Lance wanted them to tell his family. And how he loved them all, so, so much. If his eyes lingered on Keith a little too long at that, no one caught it in the fading light. 

His last breath was little more than a huff, a final gust of lilies and a single rose petal wafting past his parted lips. Pidge screamed, Coran dragging her away from the body and back towards the ship. Shiro and Allura walked back wrapped around each other, Hunk clenching his flower crown. 

Keith let his tears fall freely as he walked, and felt a tickle in his throat. He coughed, and caught the scent of dandelions.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This artwork was done by my lovely sister 6licoricesticks, who can be found on tumblr at the same handle!

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry my other fic will update on Wednesday like normal! I'm several, several chapters ahead of my posting schedule so we're all good.


End file.
